Australian-born e-commerce platform Bigcommerce
has raised a whopping $40 million from US venture fund Revolution
Growth to fund technology improvements and a hiring spree in
Sydney and Austin, Texas.

The Series C funding round brings Bigcommerce’s total amount of
funding to $75 million and sees Revolution Growth founder and
former AOL CEO Steve Case join the board with a minority stake.

Bigcommerce was founded in 2009 by Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell
Harper. It allows businesses to build and manage e-commerce
websites for $25-$300 a month and has about 36,000 clients
currently.

“We bootstrapped the business ourselves off the back of credit
cards,” Machaalani told Business Insider.

“In 2011 we raised $15 million in a Series A funding round from
General Catalyst. In 2012 General Catalyst led a $20 million
Series B investment round, which also included Mike Maples of
Floodgate and one of the early investors in Twitter.

“We keep close relationships with investors we feel will add
value to the business regardless of whether we’re raising or not.
When we decided to raise another round of financing, we had spent
a lot of time with Steve Case and the Revolution family and knew
there would be a great fit.

“Revolution Growth offers a lot more than just the capital –
there is experience, advice and also a great network we can
leverage to build the business even faster.”

With the $40 million investment, announced tonight, Machaalani
and Harper plan to grow from 260 to 400 staff by mid-2014 and
build new features that will allow clients to integrate their
Bigcommerce stores with existing marketing, inventory, analytics
and order management software.

While more than 65% of Bigcommerce clients are located in North
America, Harper told Business Insider that the founders “love
being a part of [the Australian startup scene], where we’re
always meeting great entrepreneurs”.

“There is also a thriving investment scene, but it tends to be at
the earlier (seed and series A) stages,” he noted.

“For bigger fundraising at later rounds, the market in the US is
significantly larger. The larger venture capitalists in the US,
like Revolution Growth, have great experience in taking B2B
software businesses from helping tens of thousands of small
businesses, to helping hundreds of thousands, and even millions
of customers.”

Forbes reported earlier this month that Bigcommerce claims to
have facilitated some $2 billion of online sales by clients since
2009, and expects to facilitate $3 billion by the beginning of
2014.